Autism Service

Dogs

Merope Pavlides,

MS, CPDT, CDBC

Imagine you are a first-time parent, proud of your beautiful baby as he hits all the developmental milestones in the first few months of life.  He rolls over, sits up, babbles, looks at you, and smiles. Maybe your baby is a bit fussy -- but that’s colic, right? Life is good. Then, around his first birthday, something starts to change. He looks past you rather than engaging with you. Babbling hasn’t turned into words, or maybe existing language has disappeared. Fussiness has evolved into tantrums. Your son may have even started injuring himself and others during these explosions. He doesn’t seem interested in other children, and his interactions with toys consist of spinning them and lining them up. He walks on his toes and flaps his hands. Day by day, he seems to be slipping away from you, becoming harder and harder to reach.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the parents of 1 in 150 children (most of them boys) will go through some form of this experience as they watch the symptoms of autism emerge in their child.  They will struggle with developmental delays and challenging behaviors and will likely be confounded regarding how to respond. They will receive conflicting information from medical and educational professionals and come to realize how little we know about this disorder. They will try intervention after intervention, finding some more successful than others. They will advocate tirelessly for their child in the face of inadequate services; they will plead with legislators to take the staggering numbers seriously, and each day they will watch hopefully for signs that their child is moving out of autism’s clutches.

Autism is a developmental disorder consisting of a triad of symptoms: impairment in language development, impairment in social skill development, and presence of restrictive/repetitive behaviors. It is a “spectrum disorder,” meaning that presentations range from profound disability to the milder challenges of Asperger’s Syndrome. Every individual has a unique collection of symptoms, and these usually change over the course of his/her lifetime. In all likelihood, there is no one cause of autism, which makes conducting research in etiology difficult. In addition, many people with autism experience health issues -- such as gastrointestinal illness or seizure activity -- as well.

With increasing frequency, people with autism and their families are turning to service dogs to help deal with the challenges of this disability. And although dogs have been partnered with individuals with a variety of disabilities for decades, working with people who have autism is new territory. There are still relatively few organizations that train autism service dogs, although the number is increasing to meet demand. Existing programs are flooded with requests -- often the wait time for an autism service dog is 2-3 years. And although there are fundamental similarities in the raising and training of all assistance dogs, serving the needs of clients with autism can mean developing some very different strategies as service providers.

Customized Service Dogs

Typically, assistance dogs are partnered with one person with a disability. Certainly the dog has relationships with other family members, but he/she works primarily with one person. Autism service dogs, however, are usually asked to be part of a team. Many people with autism, especially children, are not able to function as the dog’s handler. So an adult -- most often a parent -- fills that role. The dog is often double-leashed, with the child either tethered around his/her waist, or holding on to a leash connected to a harness. The parent then holds a leash attached to the dog’s collar. For the dog, this arrangement means being able to discriminate between those cues given by the handler and the desires of his/her charge. 

Another challenge in providing and training autism service dogs lies in the vast variety of presentations of autism. Family expectations regarding the role of a service dog can differ dramatically. Some families want a dog that will keep their child from bolting, as many children with autism are prone to moving suddenly into traffic and other unsafe environments. Other clients are interested in a dog that will alert to the child’s attempts to wander from home or that is able to recognize a coming seizure. For some families, search and rescue training is paramount. Many are primarily focused on having another helper in public, and want a dog that will promote emotional calming in the child.  And sometimes the dog is primarily a social lubricant, helping the individual with autism develop social skills by raising what’s referred to as “social capital.” (People are more likely to interact positively with a person with a dog.) Thus, service providers are faced with the challenge of customizing dog placement and training to a greater degree than they might otherwise. 

Because it’s impossible to be all things to all people, many autism service dog providers limit what they offer. Not all organizations decide to utilize a tethering system, for instance, and therefore may only serve individuals who are reliable in holding a leash. Many do not train for search and rescue, or for seizure detection. Although dogs are most often placed after a year of age, some agencies prefer to place puppies to help strengthen the bond between the child with autism and the dog. (The social skills deficits in autism can often render creating relationships challenging.) Although autism service dogs are trained for public access, some programs focus primarily on fostering the therapeutic qualities of the animal interaction, concentrating on developing the dog’s ability to provide sensory integration and calming.

Working with Families

Successful assistance dog placements always depend greatly on how well-matched the dog and human partner are. This is especially true when providing autism service dogs. Dogs must be matched to the individuals with autism and to the families. For this reason, most autism service dog providers spend a tremendous amount of time and energy with intake. Family needs and expectations must be aligned with the type of training the organization provides, and then the individual with autism must be deemed an appropriate candidate for a service dog. Some people with autism may be too aggressive to work with an animal, may have self-stimulatory or self-injurious behaviors that are difficult to control, or may have sensory challenges that get in the way. Fears and anxieties can also prove to be tremendously difficult to overcome for this population, ruling out certain placements. And because having an autism service dog impacts the entire family to a great degree, family dynamics must receive careful consideration.

The dog’s welfare -- both physical and emotional -- must also be of utmost importance in developing a placement. Working as an assistance dog can be stressful, no matter what the specifics. Working with someone with behavioral challenges who is often extremely unpredictable is even more so. The service provider must feel confident that the dog has sufficient access to play, affection, and relaxation when off-duty. Although a few organizations incorporate shelter dogs into their programs, most have breeding programs or work with known breeders to acquire dogs well-suited to this type of job.

School Placements

For adults with disabilities, taking an assistance dog partner to work has become a relatively wide-spread practice. Children with disabilities, however, face more hurdles obtaining school access for their dogs. If the child with autism cannot handle the dog independently, complications become even greater. Most schools resist the notion of the inclusion of autism service dogs, and parents are often forced to advocate long and hard for this accommodation. Children who do not require a one-on-one aide educationally are less likely to be successful in attempts to have a service dog and handler accompany them to class, in spite of how much behavioral support the dog can offer. Providers of autism service dogs are finding themselves teamed with parents to develop models for successful educational placements in many areas of the country, and are quickly becoming experts on the mandates of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Breeding, raising, and training assistance dogs becomes just part of the skill set necessary for those designing autism service dog programs.

Given the staggering number of people diagnosed with autism, and how very different each individual on the autism spectrum is, it is incumbent on us as a culture to develop services that address educational and healthcare needs. But it is equally important that we create opportunities for community inclusion and the pursuit of true quality of life. For many people with autism and their families, teaming up with a service dog is life-altering. For some families, it means not having to constantly struggle to hold on to a child trying to run away in public. For others, it means sleeping through the night for the first time in years. For many, it means seeing their children bond with other living beings in new and amazing ways. For all, it means being given that special kind of emotional shoring up that dogs so willingly offer us humans. And as children with autism become adults, working with autism service dogs will hopefully become a prevalent and valued method of helping create full, successful community inclusion.

Merope Pavlides owns Compliant Canines, LLC. She is the mother of a son with autism and holds an MS in Special Education. Her book, Animal-assisted Interventions for Individuals with Autism, is available from Amazon.